Charles Fain Lehman, Daniel Di Martino, Jesse Arm, and Renu Mukherjee discuss the Trump administration’s pause in student visa appointments, New York City’s mayoral race, and the best pizza in the U.S.
Audio Transcript
Jesse Arm: So I think the Trump administration’s move to pause the student visa appointments isn’t just about espionage. It’s about restoring integrity to a system that’s been weaponized against the country that’s hosting it. So when you’ve got nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals that are entering annually on student visas, and we have repeated incidents of espionage, of surveillance and military base incursions by these visa holders, it’s certainly not xenophobic to hit pause. It’s basic prudence, right? I mean, the threat goes beyond China. We’re seeing a broader pattern, like Daniel mentioned, of foreign nationals who are arriving on student visas, radicalizing on campus, joining explicitly anti-Western movements, including some that are openly rationalizing a lot of the political violence we’re seeing now. I think that’s why the proposed expansion of the social media vetting matters. Studying in the U.S. is not a right, it’s a privilege, and not one that we should extend to those who openly wish to see the West’s demise.
Charles Fain Lehman: Welcome back to the City Journal Podcast. I’m your host, Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal. Joining me on the panel this week are Daniel Di Martino, immigration scholar at the Manhattan Institute, Jesse Arm, executive director of sundry things at the Manhattan Institute, and Renu Mukherjee, higher ed and identity scholar at the, politics scholar, really you do a lot of things right now, at the Manhattan Institute.
Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I want to take us right into the news. There have been a couple of developments in the past week that I want us to hit on with the Trump administration’s moves on student visas. Most recently, the State Department ordered U.S. embassies to pause new student visa appointments as it moves to expand social media vetting of applicants. That follows the administration’s direct targeting of Harvard’s ability to admit foreign students last week. Trump most recently said he probably wants a 15 percent cap on foreign-born students at Harvard. So I think there’s a really interesting tension actually for this group here between, on the one hand, the merits of skills-based immigration. The student visa category is a good way to be bringing smart people in. On the other hand, I think the administration’s legitimate concerns about student radicals on our campus and the student visa program being a method by which they can get here. So I’m curious for everybody’s thoughts. Daniel, you’re the immigration guy. Why don’t you take us in?
Daniel Di Martino: And you know, I came to America as student too.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right. I was like, can I ask Daniel about this? He’s currently on a different visa.
Daniel Di Martino: Yes, yes, yes. But, you know, even then I think it’s important to understand the context and, you know, Elon Musk came here as a student as well. You know, most people who come here on the basis of their skills come here as students. And if you want a school or a country that is enriched by, you could say, experiences or the smart people around the world, then it’s a good thing. Now, I would say also, at least in my anecdotal experience of the people I have met, at least in economics programs, the most far-left people are native born, they’re not foreign. Now on specifically the anti-Semitism stuff, it may be true that people from Muslim countries, and who happen to be Muslims themselves, are really the radicals, right? But if that’s the case though, Charles, then this is not a systemic issue about foreign students.
This is about who the foreign students are. And this is also about who Harvard admits. It is not that they admit people who are foreign. It’s that they admit communists and anti-semites, because that’s who they want. This is not an issue that where I went to university as an undergrad have. Why? Because it was Indiana University, a state college in Indiana. It is not an issue that probably the University of Michigan has as much. It is probably not an issue that an average state college in Kentucky or in Missouri has.
Jesse Arm: Yeah, I would assure you from firsthand experience, it is an issue that the University of Michigan has. Maybe we would benefit from zooming out.
Daniel Di Martino: Well, maybe because of the Muslim population in Michigan.
Jesse Arm: Maybe we would benefit from zooming out a little bit. So I think the Trump administration’s move to pause the student visa appointments isn’t just about espionage. It’s about restoring integrity to a system that’s been weaponized against the country that’s hosting it. So when you’ve got nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals that are entering annually on student visas, and we have repeated incidents of espionage, of surveillance and military base incursions by these visa holders, it’s certainly not xenophobic to hit pause. It’s basic prudence, right? I mean, the threat goes beyond China. We’re seeing a broader pattern, like Daniel mentioned, of foreign nationals who are arriving on student visas, radicalizing on campus, joining explicitly anti-Western movements, including some that are openly rationalizing a lot of the political violence we’re seeing now. I think that’s why the proposed expansion of the social media vetting matters. Studying in the U.S. is not a right, it’s a privilege, and not one that we should extend to those who openly wish to see the West’s demise. So, yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. Also for context, what happened this week essentially was just that they’re not making new appointments for student visas. Now, this won’t be an issue if this is resolved in the next few days while they roll out the more extensive social media vetting policy, as the State Department said that they will. But if it does last beyond a few days, it is actually going to be catastrophic because this is the high season for student visa appointments. It’s the summer, and it’s the visa appointments for the new class. And on the Chinese stuff, mean, look, it’s true that there are about 300,000 Chinese international students. That’s not an annual flow number, it’s the stock of total people who are on student visas. But usually, it’s a lot of people, surely. It’s less than Canada hosts, for example, despite being a tenth of the size of the United States. Yeah.
Charles Fain Lehman: That’s a lot of people. There 300,000 Chinese students here. Wow. Very functional country, Canada.
Jesse Arm: That is a very low bar to call it.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. But you want to take the smart people away from China, right? You don’t want to like just letting, obviously you don’t want to let in communists.
Jesse Arm: I want to take the smart people away from China if I have assurances that they’re not going to end up becoming spies for China, which we just don’t have.
Charles Fain Lehman: Renu, sorry, want to make sure you jump in.
Renu Mukherjee: I would also say Charles to your earlier point and like this actually there was a piece in the New York Times earlier today sort of harping on the with the Times’s staff thought to be a tension or a discrepancy but between the Trump administration’s moves to promote merit and the moves to put a cap on what are presumed to be talented international students wanting to study in the U.S. and I think the purpose like we have to get back to like what is the purpose of higher education on the one hand, yes, the purpose of higher education is to further knowledge, you know, curiosity, the production of skills and ideas that are going to help the United States, but it’s also to have an informed citizenry and it has to be a net benefit to the U.S. You can still have students studying in the U.S. even if there’s a cap, that are brilliant and are going to contribute to our economy and our civic life and genuinely want to be here and are here because they admire the qualities of our government.
At the same time, you can also do away with the people that might be very intelligent, but hate everything that America stands for. So, you know.
Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, that is the core problem, I think, for the administration, who I suspect would agree with that, or people running the program would agree with that trade-off. But it’s like, there’s a false positive, false negative problem, which is why I’m genuinely divided. On the one hand, I’m pretty sympathetic to Jesse’s argument, the administration’s argument, that there are many foreign radicals on our campus. There are also, to Daniel’s point, native-born radicals. Those are not good either, but we can’t deny them access in the same way. That seems like…
Jesse Arm: Well, you know.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, that’s a separate conversation, but then on the other hand, you know the title I think often the Tyler Cowen line, “talent is that which is scarce.” Like it is in fact extraordinarily hard to get people who are good at stuff. The student visa program is a very effective way to get people in. You know, how many campus radicals are worth one Elon Musk? I don’t know what the exchange rate is there, but there is an exchange rate. Like, it’s intelligible to talk about an exchange rate, and there is you know, even if they fix this real fast, there’s a deterrent effect. We’ve seen increases in applications at Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, these foreign schools that are like, we are happy to hoover up the talent the Americans don’t currently want. So I mean, that is a non-committal answer. Like, I’m genuinely divided here. But I see it is hard to do one without doing the other. It is hard to deter without deterring.
Renu Mukherjee: Something I want to bring up that’s very interesting is actually earlier today, very early in the morning, the Ministry of External Affairs in India released a report on student visa trends, like where are the best and brightest students in India now going to pursue higher education? What’s so interesting is that you think there would be somewhat, and of course, like the Trump administration is relatively new the second time around, you would think there would be sort of kind of what you’re alluding to Charles, like Indian students being disinterested coming to the U.S., but in fact, you have the U.S., Canada, and the UK still as the three most popular countries. And of those three countries, when you look at the last academic year to this academic year, the only country that saw a year-by-year increase in students wanting to come was the U.S. So maybe you’ll dissuade radicals that are brilliant and you might allow students that are not radical but also brilliant to come in, but yeah, that that we haven’t seen that sort of the dissuading effect yet.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. No, and look, the social media vetting policy, that’s why it’s so key. Because that’s how you’re going to distinguish who is a radical, right? And as we have seen with the experience of, for example, Mahmoud Khalil, this is not like they have been disguising themselves. This guy even worked for, what’s the name of the refugee agent? UNHCR, the Palestinian Refugee This is a big red flag if you work for one of these UN organizations that we know have employed Hamas terrorists, right? So that is why that policy is good. Now on the cap, I do find it arbitrary, 15 percent, like who decides what’s the right percentage. I do think that Harvard and other Ivy Leagues have made a big error, which is that they have not expanded the number of students admitted to these universities. Whereas in other colleges, you could say there is no trade-off between native-born students and foreign students because they have expanded over time to accommodate and the foreign students fund the scholarships. At Harvard, that’s not really the case.
Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, think Ralph isn’t here, Ralph Mangual, regular panelist, isn’t here. If he were here, he would make the point that he makes in this case, which is like, these are universities that have a unique relationship with the American public. They at the same time actively disdain large portions of the American public. And so I think it says something to those people when you hear, Columbia is majority foreign-born, Harvard is 25 percent, 27 percent foreign-born. It’s like, why aren’t you providing the services to Americans?
Daniel Di Martino: It is not majority foreign born but-
Charles Fain Lehman: This is the, the figure’s 55 percent, I think. Okay. You tell me the baseline’s wrong. Okay. Okay.
Daniel Di Martino: No, no, no, it’s, it’s, think it’s about 40, less than 40. Yeah. And it is not even because of the undergrads, like people just lump everything together. It’s just the grad programs that…
Charles Fain Lehman: Yes, that’s it. Well, to your point, Daniel, the solution to this is the abundance mindset. It’s like, you grew Harvard substantially, I think that that would be a winner politically on many dimensions. If you’re like, Harvard needs to accept 10 times as many students, they would hate it. Yeah, right.
Daniel Di Martino: Yet they only grew their endowment. And that’s a problem.
Charles Fain Lehman: They theoretically have the capacity. I think you can get around that. But I do think there is a legitimate concern there of why are this fixed number of slots going in such large part to people who are not American.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah.
Jesse Arm: I think this is a very much sort of elite-centric conversation right now. The general public looks at this and says, at a moment when anti-Semitism is metastasizing across elite institutions, it’s entirely appropriate to screen out applicants who glorify terrorism. At a moment where the Chinese Communist Party is causing turmoil for the United States at home and around the world. It’s entirely appropriate to question the wisdom of having 300,000 Chinese nationals on these visas in our institutions of higher learning. While China has laws on the books that require them to serve as espionage agents when they come back home. Progressives can feign outrage if they like, but the public isn’t buying it and the administration knows it. And I do think it’s interesting that leading the charge here is Marco Rubio, who in the span of just a few months has gone from a sort of Senate traditionalist to President Trump’s most capable executor of the MAGA agenda.
Charles Fain Lehman: He’s running like half of the federal government at this point.
Daniel Di Martino: I love it.
Jesse Arm: On a wide range of foreign and domestic issues, Rubio is kind of emerging as the president’s point man. He’s low drama, he’s media savvy, and he’s utterly aligned with the moment. So I do think it’s interesting that Rubio’s stewardship of this policy isn’t just competent, it’s kind of emblematic of a broader shift, right? He’s become the administration’s most effective instrument for translating Trump’s instincts into durable and defensible policy. And that’s what makes him indispensable and quite possibly the banner carrier for the president’s political legacy.
Renu Mukherjee: It’s all-
Charles Fain Lehman: I want to take this out, sorry, unless you have a really fast though, Renu. Okay, okay.
Renu Mukherjee: No, no, it’s not important. I’m just saying he’s immigrant. He’s an immigrant too, child of immigrants.
Jesse Arm: It’s a slow thought.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m take us out. So I’m going to ask everybody very briefly. This is my quick question, is like what is going to be the long-term effect? Let me ask, three years, the end of the Trump administration, when Jesse is leading us into the glorious Rubio administration. What do we expect to see an appreciable drop in students who want to come to the United States at the end of this administration? Yes or no? Jesse, what do you think?
Jesse Arm: I think we might see a self-sorting effect. Fewer radicals, more serious students. I don’t believe the goal should be fewer applicants. It should be better ones.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, fair enough. Renu?
Renu Mukherjee: I think that there will be a slight drop, though for the same reason that Jesse has said, because even the report that I mentioned earlier, it did note that some dissatisfaction with the visa programs of Canada and the UK have been a result of tightening visa restrictions. If we’re seeing that here, we might see a similar drop.
Charles Fain Lehman: Daniel, what do you think?
Daniel Di Martino: I think there will certainly be a drop, not necessarily, actually, not because of the social media policy at all, that’s only going to lead to fewer of the bad applicants. But just because of the rhetoric, because of the probably attack on the OPT program that the new chief of USCIS hinted at.
Charles Fain Lehman: What’s the OPT program, for those not in the know?
Daniel Di Martino: It’s the work permit program after graduation for international students and that’s one of the main reasons to come to college here. So if that happens and even just to talk about it, it’s just going to get people thinking which other country provides me a better path to immigrate as a skilled young person? And so we will see a drop I think.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, think that’s right, but I think that point about which other country is a big one. And, having come into this conversation uncertain, still not totally resolved, the thing Rainier said about India was to be very suggestive. I think the demand for American education is going to be pretty inelastic. We still do have very good universities, so while I’m sympathetic to you don’t want that drop because that drop could contain Elon Musk, at the same time I’m sort of like, I don’t think it will be that big because of the quality of American education, because of the possibility of accessing the American workforce after graduation.
But OK, I want to turn us, as always, to New York City and the New York mayoral race. Regular listeners to the City Journal Podcast will know that we are following with interest the race for the mayoralty and in particular the Democratic primary. There was just a poll out, I think came out last night, yesterday, showing that, we’ll get into how this works, at the end of the ranked choice voting process, front runner Andrew Cuomo was only nine points ahead of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, friend of the pod, of course. So that’s been a dramatic narrowing. I think a few months ago, Cuomo was like 30 points, 40 points ahead of Mamdani. And now it looks like they could be pretty close indeed.
The other notable thing from the poll that I wanted to flag for a conversation is that it looks like Mamdani is winning among whites, Cuomo among blacks and Hispanics, Asians are about 50-50, and then Cuomo is winning those without a college degree, Mamdani those with. So what do we make of both the trajectory of that race and also that demographic breakdown?
Jesse Arm: So the Mamdani thing always makes me want to rant. So permit me a brief one. The Mamdani rise in New York City’s mayoral race marks, think a pivotal moment in the city’s political evolution. It’s a serious test of whether voters in the Big Apple are still capable of choosing functional leadership. He’s gone from a polling afterthought, somewhere around 1 percent, to the far left standard bearer by consolidating the activist left, forging tactical alliances, like with council speaker Adrienne Adams, and out-organizing everybody else in the field. With Cuomo stuck in the low 30s and more mainstream left-wing candidates like Scott Stringer and Brad Lander unable to break through, absent a New York Times endorsement, which could still come and really shake up this race like it did four years ago with a woman named Katherine Garcia who nearly won and came in second place. Mamdani now controls the most energized and coordinated coalition in the race. So I think we should be honest. I’ve said this before on this podcast. This probably doesn’t end on June 24th. We’re looking at Cuomo likely on the Democratic line. Nine points is still a sizable lead, even if Mamdani is chipping away at it. Curtis, sure. Yeah. But Curtis, so either way Cuomo in the general election, right? Curtis Sliwa on the Republican line.
Charles Fain Lehman: He has his own line too now.
Jesse Arm: Eric Adams running as an independent, the current mayor, and Mamdani, who will be welcomed in loving arms by the Working Families Party to take their line, not like they traditionally do give it to Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic nominee, they’re not going to give it to Cuomo. So in a race that fractured, 30 percent could get you the mayoralty. That’s what makes Mamdani’s ascent so dangerous. And I could go on, but.
Daniel Di Martino: But Mamdani’s not going to get 30 percent in the general if he runs on the Working Families. If anything, a Republican could get 30 percent.
Charles Fain Lehman: No, mean, I think that if I’m Zohran Mamdani, my calculus is in two, if I’m at 40 something percent in two-way race with Cuomo, having Adams on the general line is going to take more out of Cuomo’s bucket than it’s going to take out of mine. And so if, you know, if Mamdani has held on to this like sort of core of people who are, you know, white Brooklyn socialists and the
Daniel Di Martino: Of course. True.
Charles Fain Lehman: sane vote is fractured between Cuomo and Adams and also Curtis Sliwa, or the Republican, like, I don’t know, it’s not a crazy calculus.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point. mean, I am scared about it because I do think that Zohran Mamdani is a really radical socialist who would essentially intend to destroy New York City like, you know, Cuba, like a style like that. That Marxist Leninism. And he’s young and he’s obviously charismatic and knows how to use social media and they’re door knocking and the volunteers are doing the campaign really well, but that’s how you end up winning and turn the Democratic Socialist thing into reality and end up putting rent control on every apartment in the city. You stop collecting the trash, you start giving away all these free things, and then you bankrupt the city and then it’s a whole cascade of effects. And maybe from the mayoral race, these people then rise to state government and then they rise to the federal government.
And that’s how you start the domino effect of socialism in the United States. And I know it sounds very slippery slope, but you know, that’s how things begin.
Renu Mukherjee: I was just going to say that. I mean, honestly, I have not followed the Cuomo campaign’s outreach effort to various racial minority hubs in New York that closely. But based on the most recent, like the Emerson poll that came out yesterday that we’re talking about that shows this massive Mamdani surge over in comparison to Cuomo, Cuomo is still beating him, for example, on black voters. And I just wonder, you know, it’s I’m interested to see what, you know, various Asian suburbs that went against Hochul a few years ago, that, you know, increase their support for Trump in areas like Bayside, Queens and some areas of Brooklyn, how, they feel about this whole thing, because I know we have, we’ve talked at length on this podcast referencing radical chic, but right now Mamdani is Socialist chic and he’s campaigning with Kamala Harris’s model influencer daughter. And he’s campaigning with Jamaal Bowman in the South Bronx because he somehow thinks that black residents of the South Bronx like Jamaal Bowman. They probably don’t. And so it’s just, he’s winning college educated, white, under-50 voters at this point, which is concerning. I really, I’m curious to see if the Cuomo campaign were to step up a lot of outreach in these ethnic hubs of various neighborhoods in New York, if that could really help. Because I do think that could win the day potentially.
Jesse Arm: Picking up on some of the ethnic dynamics in this race. So one in 10 New Yorkers are Jewish. A much higher proportion of that in the Democratic primary in New York City mayoral elections are Jewish. Mamdani is someone who spoke in a New York mosque and condemned Israeli anti-terror operations that targeted Hezbollah, one of the world’s most sophisticated and well-financed terror groups for killing, you know, a terrorist’s daughter, rather than condemn the terrorists who hid behind civilians, he chose to sentimentalize their loss. And this is really the importation of sectarian Islamist politics into the city’s public life, complete with its sort of third-worldist anti-Western moral framing. And worse, a caucus within Mamdani’s own political movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, just went so far as to glorify the D.C. shooting of two Israeli diplomats outside a Jewish museum that was having a Jewish event in Washington the other day, calling, they called the killer a political prisoner and urged others to follow his lead. And Mamdani has offered no meaningful condemnation of that. He’s also refused to sign on to resolutions condemning the Holocaust in his current role as an assemblyman.
Daniel Di Martino: Really?
Jesse Arm: So as I’ve written elsewhere and argued elsewhere, we’re witnessing the mainstreaming of a worldview that excuses violence, erodes civic norms, and targets Jews under the banner of decolonization. That ideology was once something that lived at the fringe. Now it’s something that’s gaining ground in electoral politics. And if you’re a New Yorker, if you’re a commuter, a parent, a taxpayer, someone who enjoys public spaces, a Jewish person, an Asian person, whatever, this is the moment to start paying attention and vote like your life depends on it. Because if New Yorkers want a city that’s grounded in things we like pluralism, civic order, liberal norms, they ought to hope that Zohran Mamdani doesn’t become mayor.
Daniel Di Martino: By the way, like every other Marxist, he’s a hypocrite who condemns the rich and then holds the most extravagant, fancy, costly wedding in Dubai, right?
Jesse Arm: Right, of course. This is nothing of what’s going to happen to New York’s tax base if this guy becomes the mayor. Spoiler alert, it erodes.
Daniel Di Martino: No, it would be the beginning of the bankruptcy of New York City again. It’s like going back to the 70s, defunding the police, know, crime running rampant, nobody being charged for their crimes, certainly not the anti-Semitic harassers charged for their crimes. If anything, he’ll probably use taxpayer dollars to defend them against Trump.
Charles Fain Lehman: I want to shamelessly take advantage of being able to put Renu on the spot, and then we’ll go to the closing thing, but I’m curious about your thoughts, Renu, on the one angle of the poll that didn’t show up, which is that the, and it’s a relatively small sample, but New York City’s Asian population, 50-50, Cuomo, Mamdani, that’s really interesting to me. Obviously it’s a pretty big diverse population in the city that gets lumped under “Asian,” but I’m curious how you’re thinking about, you know, that can be a swing vote that ends up mattering both in the primary and the general. How do you think about the incentives there and the behaviors there?
Renu Mukherjee: So your point about disaggregating the larger Asian category is key and we’re not going to get that in these polls even after the mayoral race. And we’re certainly not going to get it by religion. But for example various neighborhoods in Jackson Heights are nicknamed like Little Bangladesh for example amongst Bangladeshis certain, you know, obviously like Indians predominantly Hindu, but there are like certain, you know Muslim Indians. I mean I could see it like splitting with respect to for example South Asians, Muslim South Asians and other Asian origin groups. And so it’ll be really interesting, I think, to see how Jackson Heights goes in the Democratic primary, because you have a very large, like sometimes it’s nicknamed Little India, sometimes it’s nicknamed Little Bangladesh, to see, and you can kind of tell via the, like New York City maps, which neighborhoods are more Bangladeshi and which are not. And so I think, for example, looking at on that granular level will be interesting. But like when you look at, for example, like I’m thinking like Bayside, Queens or Flushing, you know, very high Chinese immigrant population. I do think those are going to swing Cuomo. Like I said, you know, Jackson Heights might swing Mamdani, so that’s, it’s going to be very interesting to see, but I think the variation in the various origin groups is where you’re kind of getting that 50-50 spread. Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. Also, who identifies as Asian, right? Do the Guyanese who are of Indian heritage identify as Asian? They’re not like an American or Hispanic, right? They don’t speak Spanish or Portuguese. And New York City has the highest Guyanese population. Many of them are actually Muslim.
Charles Fain Lehman: Also, also the Central Asian population, right? If you’re to people in Pakistani or people in Afghani or like, technically they’re “white” in census terms, but what do they identify as for poll purposes? Yeah.
Daniel Di Martino: Right. Right, like, I don’t know, like, you know, it’s, this is all about self-identification. So that’s very interesting.
Renu Mukherjee: Yeah, I’ll just, and like, I’ll really reiterate, I think like religion will play a great deal here, you know? Are you, do you ID as a Hindu? Do you ID as a Muslim? Do you know as like Koreans, as a Korean Christian? Like again, unfortunately, we’re not going to have surveys that get that deep into it, but I do think that explains a lot of voting behavior in tandem with the various Asian ethnicities.
Charles Fain Lehman: I want to take us out. Our friends over at The Editors on National Review’s podcast sometimes like to ask exit questions that are in percentage terms and they usually drive me nuts because you can’t ever validate if I guess a percentage. That said, I’m going to do it now. I’m going to break my own rule. So I’m going to ask everyone, what do you think are the percentage chances that Mamdani is running in the general election, that he’s on the ticket in November? I don’t know, I’m going to put… I feel like Jesse’s going to have the strongest gut reaction, so I’m going to put him on the spot. What do you think of the chances?
Jesse Arm: Yeah. Well, you said on a ticket in November, right? So I’ll say 90. I think we’re, I think this is running into November. He’ll be, if he’s not the Democratic nominee, which I actually think he most likely will not be, he will probably be the Working Families Party nominee. So I’ll say 90 percent.
Charles Fain Lehman: Interesting. Okay. Renu, what’s your guess?
Renu Mukherjee: Yeah, I’ll say 85. iof you asked me, “what is it that he’s the winner of the Democratic Party?” I’d say 12 percent. I really don’t think he’s going to win, but yeah, I think his ego is quite large and he definitely is going to be on the ballot in some form.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Daniel, what do you think? Are you up there?
Daniel Di Martino: I say 80 and that is because I think that the chances of him winning the nomination are a little over 10 percent too. And so that’s part of what gives into the formula, right? And the other part is the chances of being the Working Families Party nominee. And I give to that like 95 percent. So, you know, if I do the weighted average, you’ll probably be closer to 80. So, yeah.
Charles Fain Lehman: Interesting.
Okay, okay. I think it’s lower. I’m going to be contrarian, because that’s my job as the host is to be contrarian with the panelists agree. I’m going to be contrarian and say it’s lower. I still think it’s like a, you know, I mean, I don’t think he wins the primary. I think, you know, I would say it’s like a 60-40 chance that he runs, maybe 50-50. And the reason for that is that I think at the end of the day, there’s a real possibility that he serves in a Cuomo administration and that there is some deal that Andrew Cuomo does to get Zohran Mamdani not to run.
Mamdani is a real threat to him in the general, whereas if he says, you know, you can run, I don’t even know, NYCHA or whatever, New York City Housing Authority, maybe there’s a way to talk him out. And if there’s a way to talk him out, Andrew Cuomo will find it, right? He knows how Albany politics works. So that’s my, that’s my contrarian take, although I think everyone’s right that it’s more likely than not that Mamdani is on the Working Families Party line, which will be interesting.
All right, before we go, a little bit more Mayoral news. Over the weekend, our producer Isabella flagged this story for me. Over the weekend, four mayoral candidates, Cuomo, Mamdani, Scott Stringer, and Brad Lander, all reported to Substack’s Emily Sundberg, on their favorite slices in New York. They all gave some classic answers. So as a parting question for our panelists, what is your favorite pizza, New York or otherwise? Renu, you were very excited by this question, so I’ll let you go first.
Renu Mukherjee: My in-laws are from the South shore of Long Island and they currently live there. And so I’ve become a pizza connoisseur over the last decade or so. I’d say, okay, in New York city, I’m very boring. I’m going to say Joe’s, it’s consistent, it’s going to be good. But in New York overall, I’d say two places, old school, it’s Gino’s on Long Island. It’s amazing, get a grandma slice and a new pizzeria that has popped up. It’s called The Pizzeria and it’s the best hot honey pepperoni slice you’re going to get in your life.
Daniel Di Martino: Where is it?
Renu Mukherjee: They have several locations all around the south shore of Long Island. So maybe this summer if you want to go to the beach, stop at The Pizzeria.
Charles Fain Lehman: Daniel, do you have a favorite pizza place either or otherwise?
Daniel Di Martino: Okay. Very basic kind of like touristy destination. I like Lombardi’s, which is like the oldest one, like only in downtown. I really like it. But I do prefer made at home pizza. You know, my grandparents on my dad’s side are Italian. We made very good pizza at home, better than what you can buy in the street.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right, fair. Okay, yeah, there’s a lot of people like that. We have like a diverse Italian origin population at MI. So they’re all going to give that, we don’t John Ketcham on who’s like, Imake the sauce by…
Daniel Di Martino: John will tell you that he’s probably the one who makes the best one himself.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m sure. I’m sure. Jesse, do your favorite slice?
Jesse Arm: I’ve lived in New York most of my adult life, but when it comes to pizza, I go back to my roots.
Charles Fain Lehman: You’re going to say Detroit. You’re going to say Detroit-style.
Jesse Arm: Well, actually, Lou Malnati’s deep dish from Chicago where I was born, or yes, a big buttery rectangular slice of Detroit-style pan pizza from a place called Buddy’s in Michigan where I grew up. For me, those aren’t meals, they’re memories. And because I’m a Midwesterner through and through, whether it’s thin crust, deep dish, Detroit pan, whatever, there’s always a side of ranch dressing on the table when I have my pizza. Let the New Yorkers judge. I’ll be enjoying.
Daniel Di Martino: No, Jesse, no, what are you doing? Oh my God. We need an executive order from President Trump banning ranch dressing on pizza.
Charles Fain Lehman: We’re going to get Jesse deported. We’re deporting him. It’s part of MAHA. We’re going to get rid of the ranch dressing.
My answer, I have to speak up for both myself, also for the, actually a plurality of the City Journal editorial team agrees with me, which is that the best pizza in the United States can be found in New Haven, Connecticut. I’m Pepe’s partisan myself. There are some partisans of Sally’s, there’s debate, but the other side is wrong. It’s in the greater New York City area, but the difference is that it’s better. On that note, I get to have the final thought on pizza. That’s one of the privileges of being the host.
On that note, that’s about all the time we have. Thanks as always to our panelists. Thanks to our producer, Isabella Redjai. Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, or even if you didn’t, please don’t forget to like, subscribe, rate, do all the other things on YouTube and all the other platforms where you consume our podcast.
If you leave us comments and questions, maybe eventually we’ll even answer some. really need to check on that. I promise we’ll get there eventually. Until next time, you’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. I hope you’ll join us again soon.
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